MERCUTIO
O then I see Queen Mab hath been with you: She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
in shape no bigger than an agate stone, on the fore-finger of an alderman, drawn with a team of little atomies,
over men's noses as they lie asleep: her wagon spokes made of long spiders'
legs: the cover of the wings of grasshoppers, the traces of the smallest spider's web,
the collars of the moonshine's watery beams, her whip of cricket's bone,the lash of
film, her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat, not so big as a round little worm,
pricked from the lazy finger of a man. Her chariot is an empty hazelnut, made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
time out of mind, the fairies' coachmakers: and in this state she gallops night by
night, through lovers' brains: and then they dream of love. On
courtiers' knees, that dream on curtsies straight: Ore lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on
fees, ore ladies' lips, who straight on kisses
dream, which oft the angry Mab with blisters
plagues, because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are. Sometime she gallops ore a courtier's nose,
and then dreams he of smelling out a suit: and sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's
tail, tickling a parson's nose as he lies asleep, then dreams he of
another benefice. Sometime she driveth ore a soldier's neck, and then dreams he of cutting foreign
throats, of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades: of healths five fathom deep, and then anon
drums in his ears, at which he starts and wakes; and being thus frighted, swears a prayer or
two and sleeps again: This is that very Mab that plats the manes of horses
in the night: and bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish
hairs, which once untangled, much misfortune bodes, this is the hag, when maids lie on their
backs, that presses them, and learns them first to
bear, making them women of good carriage: this is she.